It Was All Hands on Deck for the New York City Premiere of Maiden

Today, the notion that women are inferior to men is rightly considered ludicrous. In 1989, that was all the crew of Maiden, an English racing yacht, heard when they prepared to embark on the Whitbread Round the World competition as the first-ever entirely female crew to compete in the worldwide sailing race.

Almost exactly 30 years after their victory, the crew joined director Alex Holmes for the New York City premiere of Maiden—the new documentary film from Sony Pictures Classics that details their monumental achievement. Hosted by Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, Whoopi Goldberg, Joanna Coles, Billie Jean King, Gloria Steinem, and Carolyn Murphy at the Landmark Theater, the evening was an electrifying testament to women’s empowerment.

“Our first cut was something like five hours long, and we really had to distill it down,” director Alex Holmes told Vogue on the red carpet. “I had a great editor. Katie Bryer is an absolutely genius editor. She and I worked together to kind of distill, to get to the essence of the story, which is a story about inspiration.”

The film follows skipper and navigator Tracy Edwards as she strives to head up the first all-women sailing team to compete in the famously treacherous Whitbread competition. A skilled sailor, Edwards had to beg a competing (all-male) crew to allow her to join their team as a cook on her first time embarking on the race. While her team won their category that year, Edwards vowed she would never again cook for a Whitbread team—she would lead one. And so she assembled a crew of women to sail, cook, provide medical care, and even rebuild the secondhand boat they would later use in the competition. The documentary shows how the obstacles Maiden’s crew faced went far beyond the logistics of competition: They experienced chauvinistic name-calling by journalists (e.g. “tarts in a tin”), competing sailors writing off hard-won victories in the multi-leg competition as “a fluke,” and corporate sponsors refusing the team financial backing, though the late King Hussein of Jordan—who believed in Edwards and the crew—generously stepped up to sponsor Maiden’s participation in the competition.

“We ignored them—it was white noise. We started listening to it, and that wasn’t very good. So we pushed it to the side,” Edwards said of how she coped with the barrage of negative press, adding, “What I really hope this film tells young girls is that you don’t have to look a certain way, you don’t have to speak a certain way, you don’t have to dress or be a certain way. That you can do whatever you want to do in your own way and be yourself. And it may be messy, it may be hard, but if you keep fighting, you’ll get there.”

After the screening, guests took to nearby Mediterranean restaurant Ousia for dinner, drinks, and a lively discussion of the film.

“This film is about following your dreams,” said Holmes, musing on the strength of Edwards and the rest of Maiden’s crew. “It’s about not taking no for an answer. This group of women was just told—over and over again—that they shouldn’t, that they wouldn’t do this, that they couldn’t do this. And they went ahead and did it anyway.”